Catch of the Day - Curriculum Services Canada - 11/30/2010

Curriculum Services Canada (CSC) is the Canadian agency for quality assurance in learning products and programs.

A not-for-profit organization, Curriculum Services Canada provides a variety of services such as the development, implementation, and evaluation of teaching and learning resources.

Curriculum Services Canada also delivers online professional learning opportunities using ...

• Webcasts
• Web conferences and meetings
• Onsite facilitation
• Online learning programs
• Interactive websites
• Social networks
• Project management

Curriculum Services Canada's affiliate and registered charity, The Curriculum Foundation supports a Grants for Teachers Program for the development of new teaching and/or learning resources for teachers.

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Catch of the Day - CSI: Web Adventures - 11/29/2010

CSI: Web Adventures enables your students to learn something about forensic science and apply their knowledge of science in an entertaining and engaging environment.

Inspired by the popular CBS television series, CSI: Web Adventures presents three interactive "cases" to students, one at the beginner, one at the intermediate, and one at the advanced level. Each case is designed to be played in one sitting of approximately 30-45 minutes. Registered users can save and resume a game in progress.

CSI: Web Adventures put you in the shoes of a rookie crime scene investigator. You will need the help of fellow CSI agents. Navigating the virtual CSI world takes many different forms, inlcuding interacting with lab equipment, talking with the characters, and making choices as to how you will proceed.

CSI: Web Adventures is Flash-based and runs in most browsers on both Mac and Windows. CSI: Web Adventures is also available in Spanish and German.

CSI: Web Adventures is a multi-organization effort, including Rice University and CBS, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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busuu.com Campaigns to Save Nearly Extinct Language

The name of the website busuu.com comes from the language Busuu, spoken by only 8 people from Cameroon in Africa. This language has been declared “critically endangered” by UNESCO.

The people from busuu.com felt they had to do something in order to save this language from extinction so they sent a film-crew to the remote village of Weh in the jungle of Cameroon to find the last 8 native speakers of Busuu.

Watch the video

busuu.com has prepared a special learning unit in the Busuu language so you can learn some phrases of this nearly extinct language.

According to UNESCO, more than 3000 languages are endangered around the world. busuu.com is encouraging people to join their campaign “Save Busuu” and help them rescue the Busuu language.

See an earlier post on busuu.com

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EDge21 Will Be Back Monday

Catch of the Day - RepeatAfterUs - 11/23/2010

RepeatAfterUs is an award-winning, critically acclaimed online library of a substantial collection of public domain English texts and recordings.

You can search RepeatAfterUs for texts or recordings or browse by genre, author, or title. Content is classified by level of difficulty: Beginning, Intermediate, or Advanced.

Much of the text content consists of notable quotes by well-known figures. Most of the texts are accompanied by audio recordings in English. Other material includes poetry, drama, fiction, nursery rhymes, and children's stories.

RepeatAfterUs was founded by high school student Ellie Wen. Ellie saw individuals struggling with pronunciation in an ESL class. As a result, she built a website that would provide free texts and audio clips to help students with their language skills.

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Catch of the Day - MoMA Education - 11/22/2010

 

New York's Museum of Modern Art presents these excellent online resources for teachers and students.

Modern Teachers Online connects teachers with MoMA’s resources and collection. Download teacher’s guides, browse images, or search lessons by subject, theme, or medium.

The Online Collection includes artists and objects from MoMA’s many departments.

Destination Modern Art is an online intergalactic journey where kids ages 5 to 8 travel to MoMA and MoMA PS1 with an alien creature.

Red Studio is a website developed by MoMA in collaboration with high school students about issues and questions raised by teens concerning modern art.

MoMA offers half-day professional development workshops, weekend teacher workshops, and the Modern Teachers Program to help you learn how to integrate modern and contemporary art into your classroom.

View MoMA'sSchool and Teacher Program Brochure (PDF)

All of the Museum of Modern Artonline resources for teachers and students are free.

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Catch of the Day - Groupboard - 11/19/2010

Groupboard is a free online whiteboard and chat that can be easily embedded into your website. It can be used for online tutoring, distance learning, collaborative sessions, and more.

Groupboard features a set of multi-user web apps including whiteboard, chat, message board, games, and voice conferencing. You can embed any of these on your web page by copying a few lines of HTML code and pasting it into your site, or access your Groupboard by putting a link in your blog or wiki.

You can upload background images and draw on top of them in the whiteboard. All users connected to the board can see changes in real-time.

Groupboard works in any web browser and is free for up to 5 users. Paid plans allow up to 50 users.

Groupboard has free iOS and Android apps, too.

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Science Power Adds Content

Earlier this month I wrote about Science Power, a visually rich science learning site for children aged 9-12 for use in classrooms and school and public libraries. Science Power has just announced some recent additions.

New lesson packages now available in Science Power include ...

• Matter - matter basics, acids and bases, changes, properties, and states of matter, mixtures and solutions, and elements
• Forces and Energy - electricity and magnetism, energy and work, heat, light, motion, simple machines, and sound.

Go to my earlier post on Science Power

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Catch of the Day - Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School - 11/18/2010

NCTM's Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School is a rich resource for the teacher of math in grades 6 through 8.

Find both theoretical and practical content at Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. Current issue articles featured on the home page include classroom activities as well as pieces on the practice of teaching math. Many of the activities include supplementary online material, too.

Browse the cumulative index by author, subject, or volume as far back as April 1994. If you are not a member of NCTM, free previews of selected past issues are available.

Submit and share your best ideas and activities to Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. Many of the authors are practicing classroom teachers as well as graduate students, professors, or staff developers.

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Catch of the Day - Forvo - 11/17/2010

 

Forvo is the world's largest pronunciation guide. Users can find millions of words pronounced in their original languages.

Ask for a word or name, and another user will pronounce it for you. Forvo provides audio pronunciations in more than 200 languages. You can also help others by recording pronunciations in your own language.



You can also search or browse Forvo's extensive catalog of existing pronunciations by language or category such as animals or slang.

The ForvoiOS app features ...

• Access to all the pronunciations in Forvo
• Now pronunciations play directly from the app
• Keep a history of your previously played words

Forvo, from Spain, has been online since January 2008.

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Teaching Thanksgiving - A LiveBinder

Teaching Thanksgiving

Catch of the Day - Tox Town - 11/16/2010

 

With color, graphics, sounds, and animation, Tox Town adds interest to learning about the way chemicals, the environment, and public health are connected. Tox Town is aimed at middle-school and higher level students and teachers as well as the general public.

Tox Town visitors can find …

• common locations where you might find toxic chemicals
• non-technical descriptions of chemicals
• links to authoritative chemical information
• how human health is affected by the environment
• resources on environmental health

Tox Town uses five imaginary neighborhoods to introduce environmental health concerns and toxic chemicals. In each neighborhood, visitors can click on a location or on one of over 30 chemicals. Tox Town describes the health concerns at the selected location and links to web resources for more information. Clicking on a chemical shows where it might be found in that neighborhood. There is a description for the chemical and links to information about how it might affect health.

The Tox Town Teacher Pages provide activities and resources that can be used to stimulate learning about environmental health issues. You will find classroom activities, interactive resources, career information, and more resources.

Launched in October 2002, Tox Town is a project of the Specialized Information Services Division of the National Library of Medicine and is a companion to the TOXNET collection of databases that are typically used by toxicologists and other health professionals.

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Catch of the Day - The Flow of History - 11/15/2010

 

The Flow of History is dedicated to the development and distribution of a history teaching method that encourages students to understand what happened in the distant and recent past and apply that knowledge to the world around them.

The Flow of History can help you bring about a change in the history classroom, giving students a deeper understanding of the past and enhancing their enjoyment of learning about it.

The Flow of History presents a series of about 200 cross-referenced flowcharts and over 100 multimedia presentations that help students see history as "a dynamic process of causes and effects, not just a meaningless list of names and dates."

Studies of learning patterns and neurological studies have shown that learning and retention are improved if information is communicated in multiple ways. The Flow of History approach takes advantage of natural learning patterns by using multimodal learning techniques and repetition. Students are presented with the same information in audible, textual, and visual formats.

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Catch of the Day - Library of Congress-Teachers Page - 11/12/2010

The Library of Congress-Teachers Page brings primary sources into the classroom with ready-to-use materials.

The Library of Congress-Teachers Page provides tools and materials for using the unique collections of primary source documents available at the Library of Congress in the classroom. The teacher-made materials include lesson plans, document analysis tools, online and offline activities, timelines, presentations, and professional development resources.

Use the Library of Congress professional development curriculum to build teacher skills.

• Download and deliver ready-to-present professional development.
• Earn a certificate of completion with self-paced interactive modules.
• Work with the Library of Congress experts in person or by video conference.

You’ll find a printable analysis tool and guiding questions to help students analyze several types of primary sources at Teacher's Guides and Analysis Tool.

Everyone has free access to the Library of Congress-Teachers Page. No login, registration, or subscription is required.

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Catch of the Day - The Poetry Foundation - 11/11/2010

The Poetry Foundation is a literary organization aimed at establishing a robust presence for poetry in our culture.

The Poetry Foundation strives to find the best poetry and make it available to largest possible audience.

Elevating poetry to a more visible position in modern culture is the goal of The Poetry Foundation, seeking to be a leader in developing new audiences and encouraging new kinds of poetry. The Poetry Foundation hopes to change the current perception of poetry and to make it directly relevant to the public.

The Poetry Foundation features resources such as …

• The Poetry Tool - an amazing tool for finding new poetry
• Around the Web - links to poetry sites
• Gallery - images connected to poetry
• Poetry Tours - unique downloadable audio tours in a poetry context
• Learning Lab - developed for teachers and students of every age
• Glossary Terms - searchable dictionary of poetry terms

 

The Poetry Foundation’sPOETRY iPhone app lets you take hundreds of poems by classic and contemporary poets with you wherever you go.

The Poetry Foundation was established in 2003, evolving from the Modern Poetry Association, which was founded in 1941. The Poetry Foundation is one of the largest literary foundations in the world.

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Catch of the Day - Science Power - 11/10/2010

 

Science Power is a visually rich science learning site for children aged 9-12 for use in classrooms and school and public libraries.

Science Power features interactive multimedia, teacher guides, and a test for each lesson. Science Power can be implemented with whole classes, small groups, and individuals.

Critical Thinking questions encourage students to look at what they have learned in a lesson and apply it to other concepts and phenomena.

Teachers can set up classes, either manually or by importing a .csv file, in the Teacher Center to view test results for individual students as well as entire classes.

Science Power connects to a number of popular science textbooks as well as state and provincial standards. Differentiated content is included to help struggling readers.

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